RISE with SAP: what it includes, and why testing is still your job

Most RISE with SAP conversations start with a slide that makes the move sound turnkey: software, infrastructure, operations and tools, all in one contract. Then a program director asks the question this site exists for: who is going to prove it works?The answer, in SAP’s own documentation, is you.

What RISE with SAP is in 2026

RISE launched in 2021 as SAP’s offer to move large ECC customers to S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition under a subscription. In 2025 SAP began marketing Private Edition as SAP Cloud ERP Private; contracts and backend product names did not change^[8]. Its smaller sibling, GROW with SAP, targets mid-size companies on the Public Edition.

SAP’s April 2025 announcement of the Cloud ERP Private package lists what is now bundled: S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, Business Network Supplier Portal, Enterprise Service Management, Taulia, SAP LeanIX, SAP Signavio, SAP Build, HANA Cloud and Master Data Governance, plus onboarding and expert services^[1]. Notice what is not on that list: a testing tool or a testing service.

Commercially, RISE is priced in Full Usage Equivalents (FUEs), usually over a five-year subscription. One FUE covers one Advanced user, five Core users or thirty Self-Service users^[5].

The document that settles the testing question

SAP publishes a Roles and Responsibilitiesdocument for S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition. It is the contractual “documentation of record” for who does what, and it sorts every task into Standard, Optional, Additional, Packaged Services and Excluded Tasks that only the customer can perform^[2]. Read it before you sign. Three things in the July 2025 edition matter most to a test manager:

• Regression and functional testing are not standard. They appear only as paid SAP Cloud Application Services packaged services, run against test cases the customer provides. Setting up test management in SAP Cloud ALM is also a packaged service^[2].
• Upgrades are split down the middle. SAP executes the technical upgrade. Non-technical post-installation tasks, and the testing and validation that need a QA or pre-production system, fall to the customer and its functional team^[2].
• Even disaster recovery testing needs you. The document states the customer is responsible for creating and executing functional tests in DR tests^[2].

AWS’s RISE guidance describes the same split: SAP Enterprise Cloud Services runs the environment; the customer, alone or through a partner, owns the excluded tasks^[4].

Upgrades are now a contractual rhythm

Under Private Edition, SAP ships a base release every other year, with Feature Pack Stacks and Support Pack Stacks every six months. Mainstream maintenance runs seven years per base release, and customers must install at least one upgrade every seven years to stay in it. RISE entitles you to one SAP-executed upgrade per year, while planning, preparation and testing remain with the customer or partner^[3].

That turns regression testing from a project event into a recurring obligation. If each FPS or upgrade needs six weeks of manual regression, your release calendar is already full. This is the real business case for a Testing CoE and automation under RISE (see the CoE playbook and what to automate first).

Clean core changes what you have to test

SAP’s August 2025 guidance grades extensions on four clean core levels. Level A uses only released, stable APIs. Level B adds classic APIs that are generally upgrade-stable. Level C touches internal objects, for which SAP plans a changelog. Level D is not recommended and carries the highest risk; the ABAP Test Cockpit provides the governance^[7]. For testing, the level is a risk score: the closer an extension sits to C and D, the more of it belongs in every regression cycle.

Tools: what you get and what you buy

SAP Cloud ALM is included for customers on SAP Enterprise Support, cloud editions, and with cloud subscriptions^[6]. It gives you test management: plans, manual test execution and tracking. Test automation for Private Edition is a separate decision; SAP’s own option is SAP Enterprise Continuous Testing by Tricentis, and independent tools integrate with Cloud ALM too. Whatever you choose, run your evaluation on your own processes, not demos (the tool evaluation scorecard is free).

A RISE testing plan that holds up